It should be Transport Malta not local councils that issue, affix and enforce parking permits for road closures and reserved parking, a judge ruled on Wednesday.
Mr Justice Lawrence Mintoff said that Transport Malta is the authority that has the legal obligation to define clamping or towing areas and it should not abandon this obligation by shifting that burden onto local councils, which, he said, only serve as a rubber stamp when a person files an application to close a road or reserve some parking spaces.
This ruling brings into question a legal notice issued by the government last week making parking permits issued by local councils enforceable by LESA.
The judge was ruling on TM’s appeal from a decision by the Administrative Review Tribunal, which last year had ordered LESA to refund a €200 fine to a man whose car had been towed.
Lawyer Reuben Farrugia had his car towed away from Valletta while he was at work. He had parked his car on Old Bakery Street one morning in September 2020. When he returned from his office at around 7 pm, he found it had been towed.
The Valletta police station informed him that the Local Enforcement System Agency had towed the car because the parking spot was covered by a tow zone permit issued by the Valletta local council.
He paid the €200 fine to get his car back under protest and instituted court proceedings.
Last July he won the case after a tribunal ordered LESA to refund the fine but both LESA and TM appealed the decision which Mr Justice Mintoff threw out on Wednesday.
The judge said in his decision that he agreed with the tribunal that TM had abdicated this legal responsibility and shifted it onto private individuals to stick notices on walls warning drivers not to park in a temporary ‘tow-away zone’ until works are carried out.
To make matters worse, the private individual applying for the permit was expected to take photographs showing the notices that had been affixed. The signs may only be placed on site by a public official and certainly not fixed with masking tape on someone else’s property, the court ruled.
“The court fully agrees with the tribunal that it must be a public official who administers these permits, and who ensures that their attachment is done in a place and time that can be observed by the public that will be affected by such permits,” the judge said.
He added: “The court points out that it was the non-observance of the obligations entrusted to the Authority by the law that led to a situation where private individuals were given the faculty to attach permits in a way that neither respects what the law says nor the needs of those who want to use the road for various reasons.”
He dismissed TM’s appeal which argued that it was LESA that towed the car and issued the towing fine.
The judge also berated LESA for having tried to misguide the court when it argued during its appeal, that the date of a photograph presented in the case was taken on a different date. He said it was “deplorable” how the agency tried to misguide the court with something that was easily verifiable, and which was clearly untrue.
“These feeble attempts to mislead the court in this way are utterly deplorable, even more so when the Agency knows that there is clear evidence that shows the opposite of what it was alleging,” he said.